DEment

Part One.

I was sitting on her front porch steps in what should have been the freezing cold October chill but to me it was anything but. You could tell there was a slight glimmer of sweat on my forehead and that my skin was burning red hot. I was waiting for her to come back because I didn't feel comfortable knocking on her door at such an early hour or late hour, depending which way you look at it. Whichever way you looked at it- it was a rather indecent hour. I waited for what seemed like hours but may have realistically only been a few minutes. The night was dark and in a normal state of mind I would have been scared shitless but I was smiling with my jaws tightly locked in place having a jolly good time and feeling very pleased with myself. I was in the middle of a suburb right on the outskirts of town. These neighborhoods scare me on most nights but today it was slightly peaceful. I only had the one streetlamp to depend on for light and even still the grass seemed greener than ever even in the darkness. I couldn't resist touching it. My hands felt the tiny soft blades crisp and standing straight. I couldn't help myself and before you knew it I had moved from the steps and sprawled out on the ground laying in it. I'm usually a germ-phobe and I would hate to be rolling around in dirt but today it did not matter. Today I was everything I ever wanted to be and the sky was the limit. Still I was waiting for her. It felt like I'd been sitting here a whole day. And in the silence of my loneliness the weight of stupid hit me like a brick. I wouldn't feel the sore bruise of it until after I came down. I started to hear whispers in the distant darkness and the shadows I initially saw as playful glimpses of light had now turned menacing. My teeth clattered gently but the noise hammered hard in my ears. My senses were heightened and I could feel every change of direction in the wind and every hair on my head, every pore on my face, I felt everything. My anxiety was coming back and the end of this trip was fast approaching.

I played songs back to back in my head but the music stopped playing. I didn't like being alone and the nightmares of my imagination were closing in on me. So I did what anyone in my state would have done, I turned around and knocked on the door.

Her mom was terrified at the sight of me. I was the college bound smart kid in class who loved the "Hugs Not Drugs" slogan immensely. Believe it or not, but here I was, in plain black and white, staring back at the eyes of a confused and worrisome parent, 16 years old and strung out, make up smeared, and shivering in the cold of night.

And she let me into the house and right there on her kitchen table I poured out my soul for the first time...and her heart opened up and listened.